Dominick Rodrigues/Arunkumar Rao
Bengaluru : While the world continues to reel under the attack of the Covid-19 pandemic, 161 health professionals silently received their graduation degrees at the 57th Annual Convocation and College day of St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru here today in the battle against disease and illhealth. They included 60 MBBS students, 83 postgraduates, 16 Super Specialty postgraduates and 2 PhD scholars.
Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka Dr Ashwathnarayan C N, who was the chief guest, lauded the efforts of the institution for their efforts and hard work in serving the Covid-19 pandemic-affected people in various ways.
Assuring the institution of all possible assistance to help further the good work in reaching the unreached, the Minister advised the graduates and postgraduates to excel in their medical field alongside keeping abreast with all the advances of the medical field and technology.
“The programme undertaken by the institution has inspired various state governments to also implement a rural obligation for all its medical students,” he said while highlighting the concept of mandatory rural service that the institution has stood for from its inception, and the exposure that the students get because of this in their future lives.
Highlighting the College’s beginnings in 1963 with a mission to train health care personnel to serve in India’s rural and underserved areas, George Antonysamy, Archbishop of Madras-Mylapore and Chairman of Governing Board, SJNAHS, said about 70% of its graduates served minimum 2 years in such areas. Various surveys witnessed the college being consistently ranked amongst India’s top five medical colleges and being 14th in the NIRF rankings of medical colleges in India, he said.
“Every year, over 500 International students — mainly from Europe, USA, Middle East & Africa — come to St John’s as observers for elective postings or to work in the Institute’s research labs. Patients seeking medical help come from as far as West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to this state-of-the-art,1400 bedded hospital — which is NABL & NABH accredited — with an average of 2000 daily outpatients and 150 daily in patient admissions, besides over 550 doctors serving in the Institution,” he noted.
The institute is one of the 10 MCI Nodal Centers across India to train faculty in medical education from various medical colleges across South India.
The college’s academic results this year witnessed average of 90% MBBS students clearing the University exams in which over a third got first classes, while 95% of postgraduates passed with 17 students getting university ranks of which 6 secured Gold Medals.
Rev Dr Paul Parathazham, the Director of St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, thanked the Karnataka Government for helping St John’s Medical college in being a part of the Covid 19 pandemic. The Dean of St John’s Medical College, Dr George D’Souza, noted that this batch of graduates and post graduates had made immense efforts in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and encouraged them to continue this noble selfless service in the coming years
Dr Sr Immanuel Castellino of the batch of 1968 was awarded the Sr Dr Mary Glowrey Award 2018 — the highest award of the St John’s Medical College Alumni Association for service in rural and underprivileged areas of the country — for her 43-year dedicated and selfless service in various parts of the country.
